Go listen guys!

We’re doing our part to boost attendance and will be staying in Pasadena and going to the game. I wanted to take the Rose Bowl shuttle to/from Old Town Pasadena, but it looks like Foothill Transit is not running the shuttle that night. Does anyone know if there will be a shuttle for the game and who will be running it?

Lifelong, Diehard UCLA fan here living my best life. I’m amazed to see Chesney lead the Bruins and rejuvenate the fan base. That said…last couple games Bruins have opted to kneel and while that’s always a smart choice.. it may be time to consider that style points are more relevant than ever when considering them for the playoffs. Winning will always be number #1 but how you win is #2. What are your thoughts on whether we should have tried to score an extra TD vs Wisconsin or Michigan State?

TL;DR - Yes.

Much has been made of attendance at UCLA football games on this sub and on social media generally. Understandably so: UCLA is ranked in the top 10 and pulling attendance numbers well below 40,000 in a stadium that seats 80K.

Lots of conjectures have been made, all reasonable: UCLA has been bad for quite a long time, so fandom is depressed; it's more expensive and more time-consuming to go to football games; and students are more distracted than ever.

But I'm going to make an argument that hasn't been made just yet: UCLA is suffering from the move to the Big Ten.

The Big Ten was lauded as some salve for UCLA football. In order to survive the most recent wave of realignment, the argument goes, UCLA needed to follow USC into the Big Ten, tradition be damned, geography be damned, sense be damned. UCLA needed the money, needed the exposure, and needed stability.

I was and remain vehemently opposed to UCLA's move to the Big Ten, and I view the low attendance numbers as another symptom that this move ultimately hurt UCLA. I'm going to make the argument that the move to the Big Ten has suppressed attendance, though I want to caveat by saying we have a ridiculously small sample.

Methodology

I looked at attendance data from 2008 to 2026 and created a line chart of each game's home attendance with a median attendance line for each season. After doing some inspection, there was a lot of noise around the quality and caliber of non-conference opponents—sometimes UCLA hosted a top-10 Oklahoma team, sometimes they hosted South Alabama. I took all nonconference opponents out of the dataset.

I also saw that the USC game at the Rose Bowl was always very highly attended, for obvious reasons. Because there was a lot of noise around that game, and because that game only shows up in the dataset once every other year, I took it out of the dataset too.

That basically left four conference games per year with the exception of 2026, which is still underway. I decided to segment each season to make it easier to see season-by-season shifts over time.

I then annotated the chart with "bounce back" seasons and "downslide" seasons. I defined them mostly based on vibes, though I think most UCLA fans would agree. I labelled the entirety of the Neuheisel era as "downslide seasons." I also labelled 2012-2015, the first four years of the Mora era, as "bounce back" seasons. I labelled 2016 to 2019 as "downslide seasons" which consisted of the last two years of the Mora era and the first two years of the Chip Kelly era. 2020 was skipped since we obviously don't have attendance data for those years. I then labelled 2021-2023 as the Chip Kelly "bounce back seasons" since UCLA won 8, 9, and 7 games respectively. The Foster era was labeled as a downslide, and I labeled the single Chesney year as a "bounce back." I inspected the chart and wrote some thoughts.

Findings

​

Finding 1: UCLA has yet to recover from 2016 to 2019

First, before we get into my main argument, I want to point out the period between 2016 and 2019. These four years did what appears to be long-term damage to UCLA's attendance. UCLA has yet to fully recover from those four years where the Bruins won 4, 6, 3, and 4 games.

Of course, the inclination is to blame the wins, losses, and performance. That's the right inclination: 2016-2019 is UCLA's second-worst four-year stretch per average Simple Rating System (SRS) score since 1943-1946.

But here's what's puzzling: The worst four-year stretch per average SRS since 1943-1946 is 2008-2011, the entirety of the Neuheisel era, which is represented in the first segment of the line chart. And yet, attendance does not take a huge hit almost at all in those four years.

UCLA's attendance cliffs from 2016 to 2019 mirror broader trends in CFB. Per reporting in 2021, average attendance was down 7.9% in the Pac-12 from 2016 to 2019. UCLA took a particularly painful hit, dropping median attendance by 35% during that same time period.

For anyone interested in understanding why UCLA attendance is down as bad as it is, we must understand what happened in 2016 to 2019, and we must contextualize that within broader CFB trends at the time. "UCLA was very bad" doesn't seem to explain all of that cliff.

Finding 2: Winning heals all ... except in 2026

As expected, when UCLA wins football games, fans generally come back. Our chart reveals that UCLA saw significant spikes in attendance between 2011 and 2012, when Mora takes over for Neuheisel and brings UCLA back to relevance. Although not quite as dramatic, we also see spikes in attendance post-pandemic from 2021 to 2022 and, later, 2023, when Chip Kelly had started to put together some competent teams.

This trend has not continued in 2026, with attendance lower than 2025 with three conference home games in the books and only one non-USC conference home game left, which will be vs. Illinois in a couple of weeks. UCLA could see a huge spike in attendance for that game if it's getting serious national recognition, more than it's getting now, but that prospect is beginning to look bleak.

So what gives? When UCLA wins, fans usually start to take notice and come out. This is the most hyped UCLA has been since 2022, and possibly 2014. Why hasn't attendance bounced back despite better performance, even as history suggests that's what should be happening? Even if we can no longer expect the 75K attendance pulls of the mid-2010s, should there not have even been a moderate spike?

My conjecture is that UCLA being Good and Back means far more when there are teams fans are familiar with to showcase UCLA's capabilities. I believe that UCLA being ranked top 10 and hosting a mediocre to bad Arizona State team—a program with which UCLA has had a long football history, and with which UCLA and ASU see their respective residents and alums entangled geographically and academically—would be a much more interesting sell than a mediocre to bad Michigan State. UCLA has no history with Michigan State, the fans have zero history with Michigan State fans, and there is no pipeline of LA kids going to Michigan State or East Lansing kids going to UCLA.

Consider 2023: Unranked, 6-3 UCLA hosted a 2-7 Arizona State team on November 11 at 6 PM. Under no circumstances was this a marquee game for either team. UCLA was fresh off a deflating loss to Arizona, while ASU was in the midst of a serious rebuild. That game attracted 56,436 fans—that's 67% more than what #9 UCLA attracted in a home game against a similarly rated Michigan State in 2026. We can repeat this exercise by comparing #9 UCLA's attendance vs. Arizona in 2022 (44,430) to #12 UCLA's attendance vs. Wisconsin in 2026 (36,045).

While fans may blame the Foster era for this, I'd push back. Per SRS, UCLA's 2024-2025 stretch is only the fourth-worst stretch since 1945 behind 2010-2011 (where UCLA immediately saw a spike in attendance in 2012) and 2018-2019 (where UCLA eventually saw post-pandemic spikes in 2022). UCLA's attendance has bounced back from worse.

The best explanation I have is that the move to the Big Ten completely ruptured the familiarity, tradition, and nostalgia that comes along with big matchups. UCLA fans no longer have points of historical comparison to draw on and make sense of how good UCLA is. UCLA fans no longer can look ahead to a game against Arizona to exorcise demons from 2022, they can no longer look head to a game against Arizona State to wash themselves of the stench of 2013. Every game is a non-conference game, except now what were once novel, marquee nonconference games against big brands are just another game in October.

Conclusion

The data feel conclusive to me. UCLA's attendance woes can't be attributed to elongated malaise, because the malaise in years prior was worse and UCLA rebounded. Low attendance can't be attributed to the quality of opponent, because UCLA has historically pulled higher attendance when they're good, regardless of opponent quality. Further, 2026 is unique in that a jump in success has not generated a jump in attendance.

Thus, I believe that the move to the Big Ten has dampened excitement among fans for this UCLA team, despite this UCLA team being damn good and damn fun. Gene Block's and Martin Jarmond's decision to make a quick buck at the expense of tradition and the experience of fans hurt at the time, and the effects of that decision linger today in the form of attendance.

Perhaps moving to SoFi Stadium is the most practical option at this point. I understand why he's disappointed. He's done everything he can to get people invested in the program, yet the students aren't reciprocating that effort. What makes it even worse is seeing students leave before the game is even over.

The crowd that used to fill the Rose Bowl has probably moved out of California by now, and UCLA's current student body doesn't seem particularly interested in sports. At some point, we have to be realistic and consider what makes the most sense for the program. Moving to SoFi might be the answer. At least a crowd of 30,000 or more wouldn't look so bad in a smaller stadium.

I know we'd be giving up some of the traditional college football atmosphere, especially when it comes to tailgating, but damn, let's just do it. Chesney deserves to coach in front of a packed stadium, and the team deserves that kind of energy and support. As for traffic, it's not like getting to the Rose Bowl is any easier anyway.

ATTENTION STUDENTS AND RECENT GRADS. The rose bowl is not going to magically fill up because you keep posting stuff about our attendance numbers on reddit and X. It’s going to take at least another year before the Rose Bowl gets full. That’s how it worked in the Jim Mora era and that’s how it’s going to work in the Chesney era. To be exact, it happened a bit faster in the Mora era because our program had more momentum in the prior years. This is the first time we’ve been dog poop for so long so it will be at least another year. Also because of our easy schedule we just happened to have no big games yet at the rose bowl. Indiana also had attendance in the 30k-40k range in Curt Cignetti’s first year (plus their stadium is way less capacity than ours AND is on their campus). So stop annoying us with these posts. Learn the history about how it works here. And stop letting fans from other schools dictate how we should run things. They obviously don’t understand how it works here because clearly even our own people don’t understand how it works here. So be patient and stop being so annoyingly reactive. None of these posts will change the attendance at the rose bowl. And Chesney is not going to leave because of bad attendance in his first year. He was 100% briefed on how things work around here. He wouldn’t have taken the job if he required a full crowd in his first year. So can we please stop with these annoying posts and enjoy the season. You’re just falling for the ragebait of other fanbases saying they are going to steal our coach. You’re only validating their idiotic opinions by spreading them online. I don’t mind a reminder now and then but this is taking the spotlight from everything else.

And yes of course we all want to move to Sofi (bc students don’t have the time or money for the rose bowl) but that has also been discussed a million times. We’re stuck in the rose bowl contract for now. A billionaire might buy us out of it soon but until then let’s enjoy the rose bowl.

EDIT: ok fine keep posting about attendance but let’s be more positive about it than negative, and get creative with how we incentivize ppl

Its projected to rain on Saturday, im still anticipating to go! Any tips regarding the rain game and is anyone having some sort of event or tailgate that day? Thank you.

It's still TBA but any good guesses on the start time? I'm hoping it will be an evening start. I have to request time off. Please, not a 12:30 game!

Went to the Colorado Stampede (UFL) reveal event today in Colorado Springs. Coach Neu is still Coach Neu.. and the awesome human I’ve loved since Lot H tailgates when he was QB, to his time as the HC, and I’ll always cheer for Jerry, no matter where he is.

Also in attendance were Raiqwon O’Neal, OT from 2022, and Tyler Vaughns (old SC WR, brother of JonJon Vaughns.. nice dude outside of being a Trojan). Both were behind me during the CoS Switchbacks soccer game last night, and I didn’t know either of them at the time. Good dudes. Not in attendance but with UCLA connections are Keegan Jones (played WR for us, now an RB), and Xavier Sua’Filo as the O-Line coach.

Neu seemed excited to have some Bruins at the event. Spent about 5 minutes talking with us, and signed my son’s jersey.

I did, however, give him shit for picking Oregon over us.

I bought season tickets to the Stampede weeks ago, and I’m super glad I did.

That’s it , that’s all.

Only better from here! AND $UC ISNT RANKED

AP POLL

Just a shower thought, take it as you will:

He will bring together the great minds of McVay, Coach Robert’s(Dodgers), Golden State Warriors AD, Jim Harbaugh, Trinity High Sxhools, etc.. he will leverage the good.. the bad.. the pain… from those teams and will find a way to bring light to unify us and bring in a new era to LA .. this new vibe will fuel the womb of The 2028 Olympics and will transcend sports to a new attitude! New Era. It’s a new day!

PS this is the power of UCLA winning … and a grand vision of experiencing your true potential from what you have right now.

/endshowerthought

ANOTHER COMMON W FOR THE MIGHTY BRUINS

IT’S A GREAT DAY TO BE ALIVE AND BE A BRUIN!!!
They better be unranked tomorrow!

•We beat Michigan State and are 7-0

•The #6 QB in the 2028 class Josiah Boyd committed to UCLA over Oregon and Kentucky

•USC loses to Wisconsin

ITS A GREAT DAY TO BE ALIVE AND BE A BRUIN

Not only did they pound USC, they are our only hope of finishing the season with a ranked win. Root for Wisconsin vs Iowa next week!

P.S. I know the haters will say “who cares it’s irrelevant if we have a ranked win just win out”. Ya’ll are boring. Have some fun. It’s ok to watch other games and root for other teams.

UCLA has a real chance at being ranked 6th or higher in the next AP Top 25 Poll.

It is almost 25 years to the date that UCLA has appeared 6th or higher in the AP Top 25. The last time they broached the top 6, Bob Toledo coached UCLA to four ranked wins in five games, landing them at #4 on October 14, 2001 following a win at #10 Washington.

In that season, UCLA started 6-0 before losing four straight and finishing 7-4. UCLA fans might be hoping for a different ending, even if the coach is another “Bob”!

Put them on all jerseys. Like the throwbacks except fix the 2s and the 7s. Our unis are pretty solid right now, but we have perfection within reach.